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Tuesday, 27 September 2016

Well tonight sees me writing my first blog entry since July 2016 and a lot of water has passed under the life bridge. A new job in the private sector was kicking my arse for a while but I now seem to have it all under control (foolish words?).

A return to DMing

In recent weeks I have also returned to DMing after a long hiatus.

When the opportunity arose (a nice way of saying that a game collapsed
and I stepped into the breach) I have to say I was filled with doubt.
Could I still do it?, would I be able to juggle the balls of work/life
balance to give time to prep? would I be able to physically last for a 3
hour session after a hectic day at work?

Technically not a horse, but this is how I felt about DMing after an 1,800 day detox

Well I did manage to survive and I can't believe how much I enjoyed it. Sure it was not my finest hour and I was a little rusty, but I made it through to the other side and I think my players really enjoyed it.

Most likely the two go hand in hand, without the catalyst of an
ongoing campaign I did not have the creative juices flowing through my
mind in order to create content and to share those ideas with you the
RPG community.

Old Skool Shits and Giggles

The scenario I ran was an epilogue to the NSFW module Liberation of the Demon Slayer by +Venger Satanis, and Bryan Winter's decidedly Old Skool scenario Baron Mikrut's Tomb from Pulp Dungeons #5: Uninvited Guests published by Corsair Publishing back in 1997. The latter posed a few problems when it came to monster stats because it was one of those systemless scenario which used to get published back in the day by Independent Publishers who didn't want to sign up to OGL or pay system royalties.

by Gary Gygax (it must be old skool)

They always require a bit more DM effort than "Official Modules" but they often have a much bigger payback in terms of not suffering from the usual tropes or baggage which come with trying to fit into an established milleu.

I'll do a proper synopsis on My Campaign Blog but suffice to say the PCs handled the nuclear winter, mutated wildlife, a demon invasion and a dungeon crawl with aplomb. Thanks to all those who took part it was a lot of fun.

So my mind is made up and I will now start to...

Plan My Next Game

The question is where do I set my next game. The library is fully stocked with plenty of dungeon magazines and some old skool scenarios and I have 3 months to put something together to astound and amaze. Will I be proactive? Will I labour furiously to craft a campaign so cunning that it will be the talk of my game group for years?